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Saturday, July 31, 2010

Au Clair de la Lune

It must be the moon phase. Last Saturday in a fit of over-confidence, I tried to spin a sample skein of feather yarn, using marabou down. Never mind that other attempts to spin down have ended ignominiously. Feather down has the added joy of being, um, downy – in the aggregate the fiendish little strands may look white, but individually they are translucent, at times almost invisible and, even more problematic, happy to fly away on the least puff of air... to alight upon dark surfaces at a later time. I gave up and beaded the skein to emulate the full moon.

There still was time for the finished sample skein to join the victory mound watching the finish of the Tour de France in Paris. Look, it's the Arc de Triomphe!

In an attempt to harness that lunar energy for good, I cast on (::cough:: for the third time) a Piscean Sock. This one is modified to fit my Frankenfeet: cuff-down, flap heel, some jiggering of the stitch count. It's my July Sockdown! sock.

And I started pondering the possibilities for the 4! Ounce! Challenge!, a spin-knit-pattern-write-along. I'll be spinning this Spunky Eclectic Light BFL, in the Zodiac colorway Virgo. The base fiber is not white or cream, but a warm gray-brown, which gives heathery depth to the handpainting.

The quantity of fiber/yarn for the challenge – four ounces (113 g) or less – suggests some standard one skein projects: scarf, cowl, hat, mitts, shawlette, socks. Then there's the nonstandard project. Not my style, but I suppose if other projects merit handspun, perhaps it does too, at least by the light of a full moon.